What About the Camp Bastion Attack?

Three days after the bloody 9/11 siege on our consulate in Benghazi, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. The murderous jihadists released video exactly one month ago this week showing off their training exercises in preparation for the assault. Where are the questions?

Where’s the accountability? Where’s the Obama administration? Where’s the press? Where’s the outrage?

Two heroic U.S. Marines were killed in the battle. Their names — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — have not been uttered publicly by the commander in chief. Their arrival back in the U.S., in flag-draped coffins, was not broadcast on network TV. But their brothers-in-arms did not and will not forget. And neither must we.

On September 20, John Gresham of the Defense Media Network wrote a scathing detailed breakdown of this little-noticed terrorist attack on our troops. He called it “arguably the worst day in USMC aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968.” Eight irreplaceable aircraft were destroyed or put out of action by Taliban warriors dressed in U.S. combat fatigues — amounting to “approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet,” Gresham reported.

His summary is bone chilling: “A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC’s response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility.”

On September 21, the left-leaning magazine The Atlantic published an article on the Camp Bastion attack titled “The U.S. Suffered Its Worst Airpower Loss Since Vietnam Last Week and No One Really Noticed.” A few right-leaning blogs raised troubling questions about preparedness and security.

“How did this band of radicals even manage to approach a highly advanced multi-national military base without being detected, much less force their way inside en masse?” asked Kim Zigfeld of the American Thinker. “How were they able to attack so quickly and efficiently that, even though nearly every one of them was killed in the effort, they were able to harm the mighty leathernecks more than they had been in half a century?”

National Review’s Jonathan Foreman wondered whether Pakistan was behind the attack. “It seems likely that the special forces of a professional army planned the raid, and trained, advised and led the raiders — that is if they did not actually take part in it. Those special forces would, of course, be those of Pakistan,” Foreman posited. “This may sound shocking, but it would hardly be the first time that Pakistani special forces have operated in Afghanistan on behalf of Islamabad’s allies and proxies.”

President Obama has referred callously to the murders of our civilian diplomatic staff in Benghazi as “bumps in the road.” Even more maddening, though, is the radio silence from the White House about what happened that day at Camp Bastion — and what, if anything, Obama’s Pentagon did between the last major attack on Bastion in March and the bloody siege in September.

Somehow, a band of 15 insurgents managed to penetrate the wire with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons on 9/14. Their destruction was of historic proportions. The attack came six months after U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the target of a failed suicide attack attempt at Bastion. The (UK) Sun reported at the time that an Afghani was believed to have made the deliberate attempt on Panetta after “he broke through defenses and drove a vehicle towards his aircraft. He then went past the perimeter surrounded by armed security and large concrete block guards. Disaster was only averted when the truck caught fire and crashed into a ditch on the runway close to where Mr. Panetta’s jet had landed or was set to land.”

Team Obama mocks GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney with snarky lines about bayonets and binders. The thin-skinned commander in chief exploits Seal Team Six to burnish his “leadership” cred. And the president’s campaign surrogates have ceaselessly attacked their critics as “unpatriotic” for questioning this administration’s commitment to national security.

But silence is complicity. The questions must be asked: Did politically correct rules of engagement hamper our troops’ defenses? Who knew what and when? Who was behind the attackers? And what is being done to ensure our front-line defenders of freedom are able to defend themselves?

Wouldn’t you know that this administration would pull a variation of its “ignorance is bliss”/”delaying-and-dawdling-and-hamming-and-hawing” routine? In this case, they must be hoping that if they can keep silent about it long enough, ignore it long enough, then maybe, just maybe, it will “go away”.

Lucky3511

The executive branch of our government has only only one major objective. Destroy USA as a major power, reduce it to a thirdworld style communist country. They are doing all they can to remove our defences, and our liberal congress is sitting quietly in the back rooms keeping their heads down. Not sure if it is fear or what they are paid in kickbacks which makes them so subservient. We have tnearly three months to endure this treatment.
That will be enough time for him to destroy enough that even Romney will be unable to restore the country. Lets impeach the traitor now. Put him and his group of female elves in Gitmo, Our intelligence group will quickly find enough eveidence to put them all away for life.

nickshaw

Why don’t we hear of it and it’s not given any coverage?
‘Cause it would make Zero’s proclamations of having Al Q and the Taliban on the run a lie.
That’s why.
On one hand I think the whole country should be nuked, on the other, I can’t wait to see the look on Karzai’s face when no one grants him a visa.

Boston Chuck

Great piece Michelle, this is the first time I’ve heard of this.

Tim Ned

Over 3,000 coalition forces have been killed in Afghanistan including over 1600 American forces killed. What happened to all of the anti-war protesters ?

Lucky3511

They arre all too busy wiping the egg off their faces from all their ranting about Dictator Obama

brendan horn

Over 50 Americans murdered this year by the very Afghans Americas has been training. The liberal media does not care much. They only care about such things when the president is a Republican.

Wheels55

Don’t you know?… it’s all Bush’s fault. Or, perhaps it was all because of a movie.

sendtheclunkerbacktochicago

It is more than likely Michelle Malkin hit the nail on the head, there are indeed politically correct rules of engagement in place all over Afghanistan. The parents of a Navy Seal who was killed shortly after the raid that killed bin Laden has come out and begged the Military leaders in Afghanistan to reach down and look for their “cue ball size balls” and expose how idiotic these politically correct rules are and how they result in unnecessary deaths of our brave men and women. Twenty-one (21) Navy Seals were like sheep being led to the slaughter due to this Obama created “rules of engagement” and this is one Navy Seal parent that is really pissed off about it. Sean Hannity interviewed the mom and dad, what a sad, sad testimony about a military that is forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs.

This is typical of this Man/Child led administration, an administration made up of Chicago thugs who know nothing about the military. The man doesn’t know how to salute, he doesn’t know how to pronounce corpsman, he doesn’t know the all military basic training facilities still teach close quarter bayonet fighting, he doesn’t know that some special ops units still use horses, he obviously he doesn’t know how to give an order to scramble jets off an aircraft carrier when a Consulate with 4 Americans defending it are about to be slaughtered, etc., etc. This is indeed a Bullshitter in Chief!!

This man needs to be cuffed for his fraudulent activity (forged birth certificate, forged selective service registration, flagged and fraudulent SS#). He is nothing more than a Chicago, instead of a three piece suit he should be wearing a HOODIE! When folks like Bernie Goldberg and his buddy Bill O’Reilly finally reach down and grab their “cue ball size balls” (Joe Biden) and report on this scandal of the century we will be rid of this bad nightmare. At this point in time their silence is protecting this clunker.